Gang-banger reform: Closeup profile of Kennebrew - Black man in dark-framed glasses wearing multi-color geometric print mask

A gang-banger since 8th grade, former Blood sets a new course with a former prosecutor’s help

There is no recent official count of how many individuals have departed gang life. In 2012, the most recent year that the U.S. Department of Justice National Gang Center estimated the data, roughly 850,000 members were in some 30,700 youth gangs across the country. Those numbers decreased from 1996 through 2002, then increased steadily over the next decade. A 2014 study in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology found that 70% of gang members joined as adolescents and left before adulthood. 

Why do young people join, why do they leave and how do they stay away?

A New Yorker’s one-time criminal charge, juvenile probation and homelessness

In the eyes of court officials with say-so over whether he remains free or on lockdown, Nasheem Heath has mostly made the right moves since, at age 16, he was arrested for pointing a pistol at a random stranger and snatching that man's necklace and cash. Heath has not been re-arrested. He has held a seasonal job with a moving company. What he still doesn’t have is a home to call his own or the kind of income that would let him afford it. I was angry,” said Heath, now 20, who was a homeless kid on that night in May 2017 when he committed that crime.

Education For Young People In Shelters Was Already a Challenge — Then Coronavirus Hit

More than 40,000 K–12 public school students in Washington experienced homelessness in 2017–18, a number that has nearly doubled in the past decade and likely will continue to grow because of pandemic-driven job losses. For these youth, remote schooling might mean attending class in a shelter room they share with their mother and two siblings. It might mean missing classes due to glitchy Wi-Fi or insufficient cellphone data. And, especially for homeless youth who are on their own, it might mean not having an adult who can help them with assignments and prod them to stay on track. 

NY Orthodox Jewish Teenagers Charge COVID-19 Is Bringing Up Anti-Semitism

NEW YORK — They all had disturbing stories, and they all had a familiar ring to them. 

Yakov, who declined to give his last name, was waiting in line at the Whitehall Terminal in Manhattan waiting to take a leisurely ferry trip across the bay to Staten Island when he was told to get out by other passengers. He was wearing a mask, he said, but that didn’t matter as much as his conservative garb. 

“They’re looking for an excuse to hate us, and they found it in the virus,” the 16-year-old said. “The pandemic has given them the freedom to say what they always have wanted.” 

Yehuda Weinstock took his children upstate to go apple picking. “We were treated like we had the plague,” he said. ‘What do you say to your children?” 

Coronavirus and the fear it has stoked across the city after bodies were piled up outside hospitals in the spring has led to the resurgence of a social virus. Scarred by daily experiences of anti-Semitism, Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn fear the pandemic and the restrictions that come with it will incite hatred and violence toward them.

Alabama activists say defunding police rooted in legacy of southern organizing article video image

Alabama Activists Say Defunding Police Rooted In Legacy Of Southern Organizing

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Black freedom fighters in Alabama once changed this country.

Speaking onstage in Kelly Ingram Park on Juneteenth, Celestine Hood, a woman who witnessed radical change during the Civil Rights Movement, said Alabamians had the power to do it again.

Hood was a child in this park in May 1963, one of the young students participating in a demonstration for racial equality when Police Chief Eugene “Bull” Connor ordered attack dogs and firehoses on protesters. Images of children enduring that brutality enraged the world, sparking international support for the movement.

In May of this year, a video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in custody for allegedly spending counterfeit money, shocked the world again. Protests erupted in big cities and rural towns, demanding an end to police and vigilante killings of Black people.

“We had dogs and firehoses,” Hood said. “You’ve got tear gas. You’ve got rubber bullets. It’s the same fight.”

The crowd of a few hundred — Black, brown and white, young and old —nodded, raised their fists.

homeless shelter: Animation showing curly-headed boy with headphones

Washington State Young Adults Often End Up Homeless After Leaving Treatment

Speaking over breakfast at a homeless drop-in center a week after arriving at the shelter, Patrick described his situation as “futile.” In that environment, he said, you don’t have the freedom to pursue your dreams. “You’re not really living a life if you are living here,” he said.

It would be another year before he found an apartment through so-called rapid rehousing, which provides federally funded rental assistance for up to 12 months. In Washington state, thousands of children and young adults like Patrick experience homelessness soon after exiting psychiatric and substance use disorder treatment.